SBI sets infrastructure credit limit at Rs.1 tn

Kolkata, Feb 11 (IANS) India’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) has set a credit limit of Rs.1 trillion (Rs.1 lakh crore/$22 billion) for the infrastructure sector, a top official of the bank said Friday.”We have a limit of Rs.1 lakh crore for financing infrastructure projects in the country,” SBI managing director R. Sridharan told reporters on the sidelines of an interactive session on ‘Infrastructure Financing’ organised by FICCI here.

He, however, declined to comment on the credit exposure of the bank in infrastructure sector so far.

Sridharan said credit of the bank was expected to grow at about 18 to 19 percent this fiscal.

“Deposit growth rate is affected because of money supply constraints in the economy,” he averred.

Stating that there was a deficit in various areas of infrastructure in the country, he said many viable projects had not come up for want of funds.

“Infrastructure funding is not basically the priority sector for banks because the maturity time of such projects is over 15 to 20 years. Huge asset-liability mismatch can come up while funding long-term projects. Moreover, commercial banks have some limits to finance infrastructure projects,” he said.

He said insurance industry and pension fund industry should be the key industries which should finance infrastructure projects in India.